I get the feeling though I'll be trying to recommend this movie to a generation or two behind me and they'll just roll their eyes at me.
It's a fun a movie, not necessarily intended to be a real-life portrayal of hacker-life, whatever that is, even though the underlying hacker manifesto was grafted directly from 80's hacker Loyd Blankenship (according to IMDB's factoids trivia).
Instead of playing into the cold and disconnected hacker stereotype, these characters are made to appear cool, maybe sometimes clownish, and fun to hang out with. They're humanized and put into hyper-drive. And strangely enough you'd think hackers would appreciate the departure from the stereotype of being "nerdy" and isolated by making hacking look fun, but I guess not. Hackers kind of responded to this film the same way music fans respond to their favorite band signing with a big studio and transitioning from being independent or underground to mainstream, therefore not belonging to them anymore. It's understandable.
I will always love this movie though. People can give all the back-handed compliments they want when saying Angelina Jolie is the only thing worth watching in the film, but the chemistry between all the actors shouldn't go unnoticed. One might argue the eccentricity of some of the characters might have hurt the film, like Razor and Blade. Admittedly, they may have gone over the top with them. The roller-blading sequence through the city was something that more or less belonged to the time.
However, other elements like the cinematography (carefully crafted by Andrzej Sekula, guy's eyes are on Pulp Fiction for Eff Sake!), the soundtrack, and various spots throughout NY transcend that time and kind of create a fragmented reality. So in that regard, first time viewers will feel like they're peering through a Kaleidoscopic time-capsule, whatever that is. Never the less, it should be a fun movie for anyone who isn't trying to interpret it in a literal sense and take it all serious.
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